


Not Much of a Maiden, but a Hell of a Dam

by ewfte



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Dwarven Culture, Dwarven Traditions, Gen, Genderqueer Character, No OFC/Canon Character, Not a Love Story, Original Characters - Freeform, Work In Progress, old ladies kicking ass, world building
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-01
Updated: 2016-11-01
Packaged: 2018-08-28 13:08:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8447128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ewfte/pseuds/ewfte
Summary: You are war torn, war ravaged, and war made. Your blood beats more like drums and boots on the path to death than that of the old dwarf you are. Your name is Bloodshed, Orc-filth, and Exiled. Your name has been removed forcefully, as was your home and beard.You're at the end of your life, an old dam well past her adventuring days.You have been requested to accompany the heirs to an insignificant kingdom to a very significant meeting. Should you fail, should they die, you have been guaranteed an end fit for the traitor you are. There's no way you thought this would be easy, but you hoped it would a be reasonable journey across the wild lands. Then comes a prince with a pack of trouble, from wargs to elves to a fucking wizard following him.Goddamn.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Writing this is purely for my own entertainment. If anyone actually enjoys it, I'd be delighted. Thank you for reading my trash.

“Are we done for the night?” She asks.

“Aye” you answer. Your reply is terse, but it was a rhetorical question anyway. The two dwarrowdams have followed you miles already today and know when it’s time to break.

You don’t like to keep schedules much after the wars, but you can’t really help it. Breaking for camp is ingrained in your blood, your bones are built by campfire comforts and whetstone humming. Sometimes you remember that you have spent more time marching to outposts and patrolling the great swatches of lands between the Iron Hills and Erebor, the Redwater and the poisoned lands, than you have spent under thick mountain stone.

It is strange to be a dwarf and not be of bedrock. It is strange to find comfort in the highest reaches of spiny mountain and empty brush of plains when the rest of your people travel with their souls stuck far below their boots, trudging along the same path but in long forgotten mining tunnels instead of on the precarious surface.

It is like a language you did not learn, that one of stone and mineral.

The ladies turn their ponies to the outer reaches of the clearing you have chosen for the night. It’s not much of one, the trees on the heights of the Misty Mountains are craggy things twisted by the winds and snow, but it will do. A jut of stone makes up the rear and dips like a fossilized chandelier over your head to create shelter from the rain. The grove of evergreens cling to the shade the crag creates and the vibrations of the rock beneath your feet speak of a hole you can shove the ladies into if your group is attacked.

You pile the dried fuel you have been carrying under your oilcloth near the center of the overhang. You have a lighter, an old one where the flint is nicked, and plans of potato and jerky for dinner.

The ladies have probably gotten tired of march rations but they are as a part of you as your beard is.

Speaking of, the hair on your jaw lies wind whipped and tangled where it escapes its braids. You tsk and set to removing the rings and beads from the coarse hair. The ladies come back with pockets lighter a few carrots from nosy ponies when you finally realize that they are not of soldier life as you are. They are not used to the loss of personal space on the march or in barracks. They do not know social expectations get thrown out the window the first time you face death for your fellow warrior, that braiding circles are as common in camps as stories of sexual escapades are.

Bugger.

“Oh thank Mahal, I thought we were going to have to show up to the meeting like rabid savages!”

That’s the younger one then, though she sounds decidedly less insulted than you expected her to be. You don’t know much of royalty, but expect them to get offended you did not warn them prior to letting down your hair.

“I must apologize, I forgot where I was,” You move to stand but are frozen by the sight of your youngest charge pulling the pins from her hair and shaking it out into a long silky sheet. You could probably smell it, the waves of sweet sweat and sea salt and rose perfume those west of the Blue Mountains use.

You keep your breathed stuffed in your lungs and pull your eyes from the ripples of black twisting in the mountain breeze. Her fingers run through tresses and catch on and tear through near invisible knots. You can feel the snags of her fingernails down your spine.

You finish your aborted gesture to leave and mumble about respecting the privacy of gentry.

Dusty laughter rings from the outcropping behind you and follows you briefly, with the warmth and light of the fire, into the drizzling darkness. You look behind you to make sure the two haven’t fallen prey to orcs to second you left and see the older dwarrowdam pulling carved sea shell from the loops of her beard as she laughs at her little sister’s flailing. The younger lady has caught her coral bracelet on a braid and is torn between cursing and giggling.

You remember how you acted at one hundred; you should be happy you are escorting civilized dwarrows instead of the wicked youth you and your closest friends were.

The rain will make re-braiding easier anyway, you console yourself. Plus, you can wash away any filth that has accumulated from digging up supply caches and crushing skulls.

You check the ponies briefly and are pleased to find the ladies did a wonderful job in tying the three up. You give the pack one, the one you were offered but refused on the basis of ‘fighting in too many wars to count and doing just fine without a four-legged hell beast, thank you very much’, a pat on the neck. The saddles receive a similar inspection to the horses themselves and you spend a good half hour when your hair soaking in the downpour as you remove packs and loosen the saddle girths to slip the seats off your good beasts.

The ladies are mostly done threading sea glass and mother of pearl back into their beards by the time you bring the majority of your gear under the outcrop. You slip away to finish your own hair and to let them talk for a while. They might not be paying you enough for services, but they are good kids. If one of the two had inherited the crown of the sandstone caves, you would have been happy to serve them.

As it is, you are low on benign rulers and even lower on rulers who take you in. Your fingers catch on the tuft of a regrowing braid near the part of your hair and you grimace. Pasts are often physical in this mortal realm, through scars or shame-shorn locks.

Silver hair curtains your eyes as you haphazardly brush though the hair reaching past your lower back. The rain has evened out into a measured thud. It feels like a thousand fingertips pressing against your skin, massaging away knots in your shoulders.

You take the time to strip off your breast plate and tunic before glancing back on the ladies. They cannot see you from your position by the side of the path but you can see them set up the basic stove you taught them to make and bake potatoes in.

Your tunic is wrung out and shaken harshly before you set it over a branch to get a more even washing. Your breastplate is set upside down to wash the leather on the inside. The rain’s probably not the best for it, but it stinks to high heaven and you only have a month or so left till you hit Dain’s kingdom. You can’t show up smelling sour and unkempt.

You stand there in your trews and shake like a dog in the rain. Gods above does it feel good to be in a nice rainstorm again. No lashing trees or buzzing drizzle, just pounding drops of water against your skin. You even uncap and pull the piercings from your brow and nose. The ones in your ears can stay til you again return the road. Right now, you just relax.

There is a void of time that stretches from the moment. It’s just peace, just waiting. It’s good.

You break it by reaching up, gathering the hair of your brow, just where it naturally parts, and begin a one sided braid. Start from the crest of your skull and work down, arms used to the weight of gravity and far heavier things, til your fingers press ungainly behind your ear. Stop here and secure the weave with three good iron pins. Repeat this on the other side until a braid lies as a mirror to its brother. They look like a wreath, your mother once said to you. A halo now, now that your hair lies silver and white unlike your previous brown.

One hundred seems eons away from what you are now.

Your rank and craft braids go next now that your family braid is done. Or well, your family braid was more locally known. Your father had it and so did his father. If you had kids, they would one day walk with wreaths around their foreheads. The ones that symbolize your clan, the ones all dwarrow would be able place- as all of your people stem from few fathers- would thread through your beard. They would be prominent and ancient, passed down from forefathers. They would, but they lie under a birch tree, all four of them now woven with grey roots instead of your grey hair.

But you don’t, so you twist the pattern ingrained in your head in the hair from your temple pulled down behind your ear, nestled between its soft shell and the three iron pins that sit like the ribs of the aunt who gave them to you. These two braids lie long and flat down your neck, come to rest at the hollows of your collarbones. You thread a detailed iron cylinder in one and follow with a plain copper ring, senior officer and journeyman brewer respectively.

Your beard is given a rough scrub and a decent comb through with your blunted nails. You are gathering three strands at your right sideburn to start your typical chin strap (wonderful for keeping stray hairs from gathering road grime and orc gore) when you hear it.

A mumble of voices is close, maybe ten meters from your shelter under a spindly pine. Your hands pull the hunting knife attached to your left thigh as your other feels for the hand axe that normally hangs at your hip.

It’s back with the dams, you remember, both it and its brother and your great axe. Casting around for additional arms that you might have unknowingly smuggled to bathe with, you find your shoes also lie to dry by the fire. You curse yourself soundly before drifting closer to the group. A glance over your shoulders shows the ladies you have been hired to protect sit ignorant of the danger approaching.

Goddamn.

True, running beard first into a Mahal damned caravan with only a knife and trousers to your name is not the wildest thing you’ve done in your three hundred or so years, but you are getting along in your life, dammit! No longer are your limbs light as pumice and corded of youthful invulnerability. The days of seven hour sieges and drinks with the lads over split Orc skulls are over. Age has given you wisdom, hopefully, but has also grounded you closer to the rock you were born of. It’s how your people age, dwarrows settle until their gravity rips a hole within them, imploding so unlike men and mortals do. You will die in the course of a month whereas the other races are born dying.

But that month has not come past, so you spit what of your mustache has collected in your mouth, and settle your vast weight on your toes.

The only thought that keeps you from ambushing the caravan halfway is one for the dams behind you. The troop approaching cannot see the red glow of your fire or the dark shadows of your charges. Your life matters to ensure they make their way to the Iron Hills, but yours is expendable if they do not make it. Their chances without a decent guide will be slashed, but they have no chance in a coffin.

You step into the path of the first pony with a knife in your fist and a cry on your lips. The girls will get to the hole, they will get your extra supplies and the map, you just have to ensure this group has not enough members to catch your charges when they inevitably fuck up, as novices are prone to.

You hope they remember you, if- no, when they make it. You hope you fulfill your dream and get written into a drinking song, woven into a tapestry, _something_ to make up for the failures your life is built upon.

The pony in front of you screams as you do and rears back.

You scramble back and duck under a lashing hoof. A stone flies at you, lances your exposed cheekbone open while you deflect another with your forearm.

It stings like a bitch.

The riders, you realize, are short. One is on a horse, but his slumped shape lies further from your current opponent. Who is again, on a mount, backed up with long range assets, and now wielding a great hammer.

Still not your worst moment, but you’d like to think otherwise as blood clots against your teeth and the rain beading on your forehead slips into your eyes.

The front rider raises his hammer and damn you would fix that if you lead the kid. Calvary sweeps weapons, clearing the sides of his mount instead of trying to strike them like an iron spike.

This ain’t your kid though, so you dash past the pony, who has just now landed its front legs in a two beat and is preparing for another jostle, and stutter step to avoid the downwards slash of the hammer. The wielder’s torso swings closer to you, following the momentum of his hammer, and you pull him from his now rising pony to the ground. His foot catches in the stirrup closer to you and he twists instead of falling flat on his face. Unfortunately not enough to crack his ankle, but it does pull him so his back faces your torso and his hammer lies beneath his ponies’ hooves.

You catch him around the throat and pull your knife close enough to shove the blade against his pulse point, under his- ...his beard.

You have enough time to register that you might have attacked a fellow dwarf before an arrow whistles past the upset pony and thunks heavy into your left thigh.

Fuck.

Again, not worst injury but not one you want. An arrow in, or really any injury to, your leg means no walking and persistent pain. No walking and persistent pain means you will probably lead the dams into a trap, either from noise or inability to be alert to sense the damned thing.

You bring your injured leg up and clamp most of your weight down on the maybe-dwarf’s hand. You scream through a locked jaw but it’s worth not getting a shattered pelvis.

“HALT!” A voice rings out from the dimly lit group.

The group does but you can hear the creak of a bow stretching as the archer of the group lines up another shot. Next one’s going to your face you bet.

You take a gasp of a breath through the pain.

“State your names and purpose!” You yell back, pulling the maybe-dwarf’s head back by his odd hat to reveal the shine of the blade against it.

Someone in the group gasps and you can hear the rasp of steel on leather. It’s honestly a bigger group than one you were expecting.

For a moment, there is silence, then the voice calls back, “We are Thorin Oakenshield and the company fourteen. We travel to the Iron Hills.”

Lords above, if you just attacked royalty you are a dead dam.

“I might believe you, as if you are who you say my grandfathers kneeled at the throne of yours. This ranges are full of men and orcs, however.” You reply to the figure dismounting and striding towards you and dwarf shifting in your grasp. You tighten your hold on his hair and fight the urge to shift off your bad leg, to clutch it and hiss in pain.

“I am whom I say. Know me now as a prince while you threaten my men.” His voice rumbles like the majestic beast it pours from. You see the nose and brow of King Thrain under darker hair.

The image of telling this tale at the next pub keeps you from doing anything stupid, like accidently slitting the dwarves throat in shock or stabbing yourself to escape the undeniably painful future this will lead to. Your old war drinking buddies are dead, but their grandchildren will want to know of how you threatened the soldier of a desecrated prince in just your trews and underthings.

You solely remove the blade, desperately thinking of what to do. You were never one for diplomacy, probably what has kept your journey with the dams a mix of polite overtures and uneasy silence (on your part) while they talked. In the old days. You once went so far to avoid meeting royalty as to dress your lieutenant in your ceremonial garb and have him sit at the head table during commencement parties with nobles.

“Forgive me then-” Here you fumble, hopefully unnoticed, “-your majesty.”

He nods and it’s a grave thing. You can see the burdens of this dwarf, of a kingdom lost and of a people scattered. It’s incredibly angsty.

“You are forgiven. We too heard of the dangers of this path. A battle of stone giants prevented us from continuing another way.”

“Aye,” you return, a little unsure what to do with this information. Damn, you despise formalities.

He seems to forgive you for this too, but maybe that’s just a noble thing. The dams are like that too, the hair incident being one of many.

The prince speaks again, “My men are weary after our hardships today. Do you mind if we rest at your camp?”

He says it pointedly, like you should have offered earlier. You nod instead of ‘aye’-ing too much like a commoner again. Your aunt said the gentry only like constant affirmation on matters of money or in bed.

You lean your weight back, off the arm of the prince’s soldier. It still hurts like a mother, but it’s settled into a steady throb in time to your pulse and the rain pounding puddles into the scant mountain earth. It’s not an easy choice to turn your back on the company as they dismount and begin to rumble in common about the weather and ambushes. You still do it, because you need to warn the dams of an approaching party of soaked dwarrow. The arrow in your leg burns with the stretch of muscles around it and the shaft sticks out like an awkward thorn. You don’t really want to break it though, waste of a good arrow even if it is a little bloodied.

You limp to your tunic and breastplate and settle the knife between your teeth as you reach to grab both. You’re glad a moment later, when the one-legged squat to grab your breastplate jostles the wound.

You stand up again and jerk your head to the overhang to get the dwarrow to follow you. The knife stays in your mouth, not only to keep the breastplate and damp tunic apart. You don’t really know what to say now. The party follows with little complaint, and stops to tie their ponies by yours as you finish your limp to the camp fire. The dams are there still, damn the reckless youth, and looked at you aghast.

“Newt! Your leg!” That’s the younger one, Lady Arbun.

You shake your head as you drape your tunic over a rock and toss your breast plate beside it. You wait til you reach your bag and rifle out cotton bandages and your hand axes to spit out the knife. It lands blade down and quivers a bit, the fire dancing like liquid neon across it.

“There was a confrontation, but it’s sorted out. You know a Thorin Oakenshield?”

The ladies are closer now and you again remember your state, half undressed and half braided. Not to mention bleeding from your cheek, forearm, and thigh.

The older one, Lady Ibun, nods carefully in her stately, refined way. You are again thankful for her presence. She probably pulled her little sister aside when you startled the horse and managed to dress both of them. You don’t know much of the customs of civvies, but any soldier would leer at the sight of the beautiful dams if they were in the same state you are.

“Yes, I believe we entertained one of his siblings, Lady Dis, when she visited Mountain Mountains and its outlying territories.” She replies.

Thank Mahal for small mercies, the ladies have an in with the prince. The three of you watch the first of the party of the caravan invading your camp and you hope that if everything goes to shit, as it is wont to do, you’ll be the only one bearing the consequences.

The little one isn’t settling as her older sisters is. She’s still staring at the arrow protruding from your thigh. “Are you sure you’re okay? Can I help?”

You squat cumbersomely again to center your rear on a stone by your tunic and weapons. “If you’ll pass me the cloth quick when I pull the thing out, I’d be much obliged.”

Arbun takes the heavy pads while you shuffle into a better position. Ibun distractedly hands you back your knife while watching a heavyset ginger dwarf take control of the potatoes with the largest of the troop, a warrior clearly by his tattoos and mohawk.

You want to reassure them, but you have to get the thing out of your leg first. You place the knife back between your teeth and bite carefully on the wrapped handle. It tastes like sweat.

One hand goes to grip the trembling muscle of your thigh and the other wraps around the shaft of the arrow. Thankfully, it’s not that deep. An inch protrudes from your split and blood slick flesh. You wrap your fingers around the head, middle joint of first finger on one side and flat of thumb together in a solid pinch, and position your fist so the shaft follows the line from your forearm.

You grit your teeth around leather, set your grip hard and steady, and breathe out.

You breathe in and pull the arrow from your thigh with a vicious tug.

It’s like the rain again, the physical and auditory stimulus pounding over you. You’ve seen the ocean only once, but you know what water can do. It carves through even the thickest stone. It’s sacrilegious once you think about it. Water and time are the Gods that rest above your Gods. All must bear witness to them. You have, you stood under many a storm and let time slip and water run down your shoulders, let it carve the knots and worry from your body.

It’s like the rain again because you fade in a sudden, unexpected burst. You can measure when you pulled the arrow head out, and you measure that by blood slick fingers and _stingburngodithurts_ after the tip squelched from the muscle of your thigh. You remember how it looked as you went into shock, picture it perfectly behind your eyelids or layer it against the background of the windswept overhang. You remember the bead of pure red, of deep fire, of dark ruby, that dribbled obscenely down to the very point of the arrow head. How it ran down the knicks in the sides and into the pock marked surface of the metal in sore need of a replacement. How it swelled on the point of the arrow and dropped back to meet its brothers, its source, welling up in the puncture in your thigh.

Then the pain hit and time skipped, shuddered and jumped for a while. You remember that too, but remember it mostly as something that happened. No details from this moment remain.

Then you snapped back into the line of the present, like you had when the murmur of the company’s voices first reached you. You awoke and knew that you only blacked out for a second, because there are still two dwarves under the overhang and the third, fourth, and fifth are just approaching. You wonder if they just stood still and waited for you to come back into the time stream, delayed their motions so the inertia wouldn’t throw you.

Then pressure clamps down on your injury and the leather of the knife handle in your mouth creaks.

Arbun is pushing her slight weight against your leg with all her might, like she’s saving the world in this moment. Your blood seeps from the poorly constructed compress she has and she gasps as it stains her fingers.

This is what really brings you back into the present. She’s only seventy, she’s a Lady, she’s innocent and strong willed and like a niece you ever had. She has blood staining her knuckles and it’s your blood and you are not worth the dirt at the bottom of a river she would drink from.

Maybe one day, but right now you are a dwarf with broken pride and a death sentence to keep you out of the mountains of your people. The dams don’t know this, don’t know of your family’s destruction, don’t know the sins that will tip your soul solidly into the claws of death devils.

You drop the arrow head and push Argun off your leg in one move, grab the bandages in one hand grab another absorbent cotton square in the other. You bundle it all up, four thick pads of cotton and a tight wrap around that, slow the bleeding and let it clot.

It’s simple for you. You have many scars on your old frame and those that fought around you had many too. The biggest killer on the battlefield is not the enemy, it’s the sickness of wounds and poor care offered by novice healers.

Ibun has Argun now, the elder petting down her sister’s arms. Arbun’s arms are trembling and her hands are still stained red.

You rise from your position, bearing through the pain of standing and the rush of blood you feel accompanying your movement. You grab a cloth out of your pack and pour water from the skin over it. The cloth goes on Argun’s hands, your stained, gnarled fingers cover her thin digits and you wipe them clean of your sinner blood.

By the time the rag is pink and her nail beds shine white instead of red, most of the prince’s company is under the outcrop. They’re watching, you realize, watching the sway of Ibun’s dress and glint of the dam’s sea glass in the flame.

You grunt and release Arbun’s hands. Job well done.

Now you just have to deal with this new pain in the ass.

You step between the dams and the fire and make a show and bending and picking up the archer’s arrow. You wipe that too, half hazardly before wringing the rag out, not even noticing how the water that spills from it colors your hands again, though the stain’s lighter this time.

The cloth goes into a corner of the honest to Mahal bonfire the company is building up. It’ll catch quick enough.

The arrow is tossed underhand to the youngest one of the group, the one with light scruff on his jaw and a shortbow slung over his back. The kid fumbles it, but manages to snatch it before it hits the dirt. His eyes are wide as he stares at you then stares past you at the dams.

You turn your back on them, I’m not scared of you and your noble steel. This is the way you know politics and gesture-talk. This is the speech of barbarians and feral soldiers.

You spit the knife out again, let them see it thwack blade first into the ground and quiver lazily. It’s not that you trust them, it’s the knowledge that you can take them.

Most of this is a bluff, but you don’t let them know. This is how you were taught long ago to deal with orckind, let them think the gods themselves raised you from magma and blessed you with immortality. Force them to bend a knee without speech, without a single touch.

Your leg is bleeding sluggishly still and you know you are going to feel this later. Right now however, you are busy covering your ass and doing the job you were hired for. And you make sure you do it damn well.

You grab your pack and your handaxes, grinning in your head when some of the dwarrow of the opposite party tense. You step forward with slate carved features and a hint of mania dancing in your eyes. With an incline of your head, the dams follow you with their own packs closer to the fire and the unknowns surrounding it.

Time to face the forge.

Ibun begins and bless that dam, she about sets your overhang into a throne room with her diction.

“Your Majesty,” a bow here, a perfect one indicating rank and everything. You see the prince’s eyebrows fight to rise in surprise.

That’s damn right, your savage self is in charge of _princesses._

“I apologize for the poor state you found us in. We have been traveling for the majority of this season to make the Dwarrow Council in Dain’s kingdom. I hope our company and current camp is acceptable to you and your party.”

That’s your girl. Her little sister follows up.

“Please forgive us your Majesty! I can say it’s a pleasant surprise to see more members of the royal family, though.”

Gone are Arbun’s shakes and you swear her smile infuses the air around her with naivety. It must be toxic to be stuck in that dam’s aura for too long when she’s in want of devoted servants or suitors to do her bidding. Too long spent looking at her long lashes and bright teeth, and you ingest spun sugar lies of adorableness and innocence.

She’s gonna make a great Queen or consort if her family marries her off.

The prince looks a little pained, like he never expected noble talk or sweet dams on his journey to wherever. His men look downright stunned and you’ve seen a few fumbles of bowls or equipment during your charges’ speeches.

“Of course. I too would wish for a setting more… suited for royalty.” The prince replies.

Arbun laughs and sits down on a boulder with her sister. You are slower to crouch, but manage to do so with little adjusting. The pain is coming in waves now.

One of the dwarves, a stout fellow with a quaint puff of white hair, breaks the pause the prince was letting stagnate. “I do not believe we have met before. I am Balin, the advisor of the line of Durin, and of course you already know Prince Thorin.”

“It seems we have committed another faux pas,” returns Ibun. She smoothes her skirts and continues, “I am Lady Ibun, heir to the throne of Thardibun of the Littoral Caves. This is my sister, Lady Arbun.”

You tune out the murmurs of the camp at this point, but it’s apparent that the scruffy group in front of you is clearly impressed. Having royalty really is the ultimate trap, especially if they have a cave and throne. Insignificant as your ladies are and despite the respect they show, the dams at least have a throne to their name. You remember when Erebor fell and you remember the Durin’s bane. That line has been chased by curses ever since the Deathless poked his peaked nose out of the caves.

You busy yourself with making the unfortunate realization, for the third or so time in the last hour, that you are still half naked and half braided in the presence of at least three future monarchs.

Damn.


End file.
